Elements for Digital Photographers - Photoshop Elements 13: The Missing Manual - page 432

photo shot as a JPEG, so people often want to boost the saturation of their raw images. Move
the sliders right for more intense color, or left for more muted color. (If you know you'll al-
ways want to adjust the intensity of the color in your photos, then you can change the Raw
Converter's standard setting by moving the sliders until you have the intensity you want, and
then creating a new camera default setting as described on Saving Your Settings .)
Here's what each of these sliders does:
▪ Clarity . This slider is a bit different from the other two. Clarity isn't strictly a color tool,
although it's an absolutely amazing feature. If you're an experienced Elements sharpener,
you may have heard of a technique called local contrast enhancement , where you use the
Unsharp Mask with a low Amount setting and a high Radius setting to eliminate haze
and bring out details. That's sort of what this slider does: Through some incredibly soph-
isticated computing, it creates an edge mask for your photo that it uses to increase detail.
This setting can do wonderful things for many—maybe even most—photos by improv-
ing contrast and adding punch. Give it a try, but be sure you're viewing your photo at 100
percent magnification (or more) so you can see how you're changing things.
▪ Vibrance . This slider works the same way it does in the Quick Fix window: It increases
the intensity of dull colors without oversaturating already-vivid ones. If you want to ad-
just an image's saturation, then try this slider first, before you move the Saturation slider.
▪ Saturation . This slider controls how vivid the image's colors are by changing the intens-
ity of all its colors by the same amount.
Saving Your Settings
Most of the time, you'll want to use the current Raw Converter settings on only the specific
photo(s) you're editing right now. But the Converter gives you a bunch of ways to save time
by saving settings for future use. Below the histogram, to the right of the word “Basic,” are
three tiny lines with a minute arrow at their bottom right. Click that icon to see a drop-down
menu. Whatever you choose from this menu determines how the Converter converts your
photo. Here are your choices:
▪ Image Settings . This is the “undo all my changes” option. If you've made some changes
to your photo in the Converter but want to revert to the settings the Converter originally
presented you with, then choose this option.
▪ Camera Raw Defaults . The Raw Converter contains a profile of typical settings for
your camera model that it uses as its baseline for the adjustments it makes. That's what